Following on the heels of an Activist Judge’s Ruling, forcing a Christian Baker in Phoenix to bake a “Wedding Cake” for a Lesbian Couple, who could have gone to another baker, but, who were Gay Activists making a political point, once again, Activist Judges have circumvented the will of the American people, declaring as “unconstitutional”, laws against “gay marriage”, passed by the citizens of New Mexico and Utah.

According to the judges in the New Mexico Ruling, the law violated the Equal Protection Law, in their State Constitution,as Fox News reports…

“We hold that the State of New Mexico is constitutionally required to allow same-gender couples to marry and must extend to them the rights, protections and responsibilities that derive from civil marriage under New Mexico law,” Justice Edward L. Chavez wrote.

With that ruling, New Mexico joined 16 other states and the District of Columbia in allowing gay marriage either through legislation, court rulings or voter referendums in a trend that has dramatically shifted in just a few years nationally.

“At first, I never thought I’d see this in my lifetime,” Rand said. “But over the last few years you began noticing a change in public opinion and I thought…maybe.”

Before the ruling, eight of New Mexico’s 33 counties had already started issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

County officials asked the high court to clarify the law and establish a uniform state policy on gay marriage. Historically, county clerks have denied marriage licenses to same-sex couples because state statutes include a marriage license application with sections for male and female applicants.

The Democratic-controlled Legislature repeatedly has turned down proposals for domestic partnerships for same-sex couples and a constitutional amendment that would have allowed voters to decide whether to legalize gay marriage. Measures to ban same-sex marriage also have failed.

Advocacy groups and supporters hailed the decision.

“I can’t get past happy, happy, happy at the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision that rules in favor of freedom and equality for everyone to marry the person they love,” Santa Fe Mayor David Coss said in a statement.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the National Center for Lesbian Rights represented same-sex couples in the Supreme Court case. They contended gay marriage must be allowed because of constitutional guarantees of equal protection under the law and a state constitutional prohibition against discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Meanwhile groups like the Flora Vista-based Voices for Family Values vowed to fight on. The group said its members already are gathering signatures for petitions to present to lawmakers during the upcoming session in January.

“The Catholic Church respects and loves the gay and lesbian members of our community,” the New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a statement. “We will continue to promote Catholic teaching of the Biblical definition of marriage to be that of one man and one woman.”

Under the ruling, clergy who disagree with same-sex marriage can decline to perform wedding ceremonies for gay and lesbian couples.

Gov. Susana Martinez, a Republican and who has opposed same-sex marriage, said she would have preferred voters deciding the issue rather than the courts. But she urged New Mexicans to “respect one another in their discourse” and turn their focus onto other issues facing the state.

“As we move forward, I am hopeful that we will not be divided, as we must come together to tackle very pressing issues, like reforming education and growing our economy, in the weeks and months ahead,” Martinez said.

In the case of the Utah Ruling, it was a Federal Judge who struck down the law passed by the citizens of Utah. Per Fox News,

A federal judge struck down Utah’s same-sex marriage ban Friday in a decision that brings an increasing nationwide shift toward allowing gay marriage to a conservative state where the Mormon church has long been against it.

U.S. District Judge Robert J. Shelby issued a 53-page ruling saying Utah’s law passed by voters in 2004 violates gay and lesbian couples’ rights to due process and equal protection under the 14th Amendment.

Shelby said the state failed to show that allowing same-sex marriages would affect opposite-sex marriages in any way.

“In the absence of such evidence, the State’s unsupported fears and speculations are insufficient to justify the State’s refusal to dignify the family relationships of its gay and lesbian citizens,” Shelby wrote.

Late Friday, the state filed both a notice of appeal of the ruling and a request for an emergency stay that would stop marriage licenses from being issued to same-sex couples. It’s unknown when the judge will make a decision on whether to grant the stay.

“It will probably take a little bit of time to get everything in place,” said Ryan Bruckman, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office. He said the judge told the attorney general’s office it would be a couple of days before any request for an emergency stay would be reviewed.

Gov. Gary Herbert vowed to “defend traditional marriage” in light of the ruling.

“I am very disappointed an activist federal judge is attempting to override the will of the people of Utah,” Herbert said in a statement. “I am working with my legal counsel and the acting attorney general to determine the best course to defend traditional marriage within the borders of Utah.”

The Salt Lake County clerk’s office started issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Deputy Clerk Dahnelle Burton-Lee said the district attorney authorized her office to begin issuing the licenses but she couldn’t immediately say how many have been issued so far.

Utah’s lawsuit was brought by three gay and lesbian couples. One of the couples was legally married in Iowa and just wants that license recognized in Utah.

Regardless of what weighted polls, and opinion-makers in the Northeast and the Left Coast try to put forward as fact, the majority of Americans, living in America’s Heartland, oppose “gay marriage”.

Just look  at a map denoting the states who allow “gay marriage” and those who have voted against it.

And, in a related issue, ask Walmart if they have any Duck Dynasty Merchandise left on their shelves. Just sayin’…

The truth is, Gay Activists could not get their way by going to the American people, so now, they, and the Liberals who walk the Halls of Power in Washington, DC, are usurping the will of the people by using Activist Judges, on both the State and Federal level, to attempt to force a change in the cultural mores or America.

The brilliant Economist and Conservative Pundit, Dr. Thomas Sowell, wrote the following about Judicial Activism:

The ultimate issue between judicial activism and judicial restraint is the institutional locus of discretion, and no amount of insistence on the desirability of change or morality answers the question as to who is to decide what specific changes or what specific morality is needed. The institutional security of federal judges, appointed for life, may provide temptations for assuming this prerogative, without providing either moral or pragmatic justification. If no authorization is needed for judges to introduce “change,” neither is it needed for generals and admirals to do the same– as in fact happens in a number of countries. Judges can conduct limited coups d’etat surreptitiously, while a military coup is usually overt and sweeping. Nevertheless, the dangers to constitutional government are no less real in the long run from judicial activism– both because of the cumulative effect of small usurpations and because small usurpations both generate pressures and provide the precedents for larger usurpations by others with different social visions.

The claim that judicial activism is necessary to rescue us from bondage to the past– from having the writers of the Constitution “rule us from the grave”– defies both logic and history. There is no contest between the living and the dead. The contest is between those living individuals who wish to see control of change in judicial hands and those who wish to see it in other hands. There has been no argument that either statutory or constitutional laws are not to change. The only meaningful question is: Who is to change them? The reiterated emphasis on change, like the reiterated emphasis on morality, argues what is not at issue and glides over what is crucially at issue: Why are judges the authorized instrument? The original cognitive meaning of laws– constitutional or statutory– is important, not out of deference to the dead, but because that is the agreed‑upon meaning among the living, until they choose to make an open and explicit change– not have one foisted on them by the verbal sleight-of‑hand of judges.

Existing social philosophies and political alignments cannot be presupposed in discussions of long-run questions, such as constitutional interpretation. Even within the judiciary, differences in “substantive values” have been drastic over time, and by no means negligible even at a given time. The belief that a constitutional structure can be maintained while jurists with radically different visions make “substantive choices” within it seems dangerously similar to a belief that one can slide half-way down a slippery slope. The argument for judicial activism must stand or fall in general and enduring terms, not simply on whether some current political or social creed is considered so superior to competing creeds as to justify judges’ decisions in its favor. It is ultimately not a question of the relative merits of particular political or social creeds but of the long-run consequences of opening the floodgates to the generic principle of constitutional decisions based on “substantive values.” Once you have opened the floodgates, you cannot tell the water where to go.

It’s those “long-run consequences” that’ll get you every time.

Just ask the citizens of the Roman Empire.

Until He Comes,

KJ